Top Apps, Tools and Resources for Digital Marketers

You probably already know how important social media marketing is today. According to We Are Social, there are more than 3.7 billion active internet users and 2.8 million global social media users — meaning expansive digital marketing options. But how can you make your digital media campaigns as efficient and effective as possible?

Email Marketing

1. MailChimp

OverviewMailChimp is a web-based email marketing service. In addition to sending marketing emails like newsletters, you can create targeted campaigns and automated messages. It offers templates that can be customized as well as a number of options for sending emails.

Features

Customizable forms and templates

A/B testing

Social media plug-ins

Automation workflows

Multiple campaigns

Real-time reports

Tutorials

Pricing

The basic plan is free and includes up to 2,000 subscribers and up to 12,000 emails per month. Other plans are available for $10 to $199 per month.

2. HubSpot Sales

Overview Focused on the sales process as a whole, HubSpot Sales allows you to create and share email templates. Every lead’s contact info, email leads, and clicks get logged automatically.

Features

Automated emails, including follow-up emails

Works with Gmail, G Suite, and Outlook or Office 365 for Windows

Email tracking, including open, click and reply data

Customizable templates

Pricing Subscriptions are $200 to $2,400 month, billed annually.

Social Media Management

3. Buffer

OverviewBuffer makes managing your social media easy. Nicknames like “The Siri of Social Media” and “Social Media Assistant” have been applied to Buffer. It allows you to optimize your posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, App.net, and Twitter, by scheduling them in advance; Buffer posts them at the best time based on time zone.

Features

Free trial period for paid plans

Detailed analytics

Multiple social networks

High security with two-step login

Posts the same message to all platforms or customizes for each

Pricing Two plans are available for individuals: Individual, which is free, and Awesome, which is $10 per month. Three plans are available for teams and agencies: Small, which is $99 per month; Medium, $199 per month; and Large, $399 per month.

4. Sprout Social

OverviewSprout Social provides solutions for social media management, marketing, analytics and customer service. It’s integrated with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and more. You’ll get excellent statistics across all of your interlinked social networking sites. Sprout Social has become an incredible force in the social media world in a short time.

Pricing

6. Nanigans

Overview Nanigans offers “profit-driven advertising automation” designed for in-house advertisers. Founded in 2010, the company helps marketers achieve social and mobile performance marketing goals using workflow automation, predictive optimization and more.

Features

Official partner of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter

Industry-leading advertising automation software

100-plus reporting attributes

Cross-channel ROI (return on investment) automation

Pricing

Nanigans is one of the most expensive advertising tools on the market, but it’s also one of the best. Contact the company for a demo and pricing.

7. Facebook’s Power Editor

Overview A powerful tool designed for bigger Facebook advertisers, Power Editor lets you create, edit and publish multiple ads at once. Facebook’s Ad Manager is for beginners; Power Editor is a more advanced and effective way of managing ads.

Analytics

8. Google Analytics

OverviewGoogle Analytics is a comprehensive freemium web analytics service available to anyone with a Google account. It helps you understand your site users and figure out which digital campaigns are working and which aren’t.

Features

Custom reports

Cross-device data

Segmentation for analysis of subsets

Built to work with Google’s other media and publisher products

Pricing The standard version of Google Analytics is free. The premium version is $150,000 per year.

9. Kissmetrics

Overview A web-based solution, Kissmetrics helps in analyzing, recognizing, understanding and enhancing the metrics that drive online business. The biggest difference between it and Google Analytics is that user behavior is more accessible on a multisession basis.

Features

Real-time tracking

A/B testing

Funnel and cohort reports

Design editor

Behavior campaigns and behavioral comparisons

Software integration

Revenue reports

Pricing Subscription plans start at $500 per month. You can request a demo.

Task and File Management

10. Trello

Overview All marketers can benefit from Trello, which is software developed for managing projects. It has cards that are like sticky notes that you can arrange on a board. An individual card has deadlines, checklists, images, colored labels, attachments and notes from any others sharing the board with you. There is no limit to the number of boards you can have.

Features

Collaborate with others in real time

For companies of all sizes

Integrate apps into the workflow

Offers email notifications and an activity log

Attach photos and drawings

Pricing In addition to a free basic version, there’s a Business Class option for $9.99 per month when paid annually, and an Enterprise option for $20.83 or less.

11. Dropbox

OverviewDropbox is a tool for sharing, saving and syncing files. Files saved on Dropbox can be accessed from anywhere around the world, including on mobile devices, and can be shared with people who don’t have a Dropbox account.

Most e-mail services limit the size of attachments, meaning large files generally can’t be sent over e-mail. Photos, videos, Word documents, presentations, and spreadsheets can all be backed up and shared using Dropbox.

Features

File storage and sharing

Accessible from any device

Preview ability

Automatic updates

Simple link sharing via email, chat or text message

Online backup and file recovery

Offline access

Pricing The basic version is free; the upgraded option costs $9.99 per month when billed monthly or $99 billed annually.

12. Evernote

OverviewEvernote didn’t take long to carve out a niche for itself in the world of digital marketing. The application is designed for note-taking and archiving. You can also put together web articles and save images, and share everything with your team. The app is available on a range of devices. Once you make a note, you can access it from anywhere.

Features

Web clipping support

Edit rich text and sketches

For mobile and desktop devices

Store notes, web clips, files and images

Record audio

Share notes and collaborate on files

Pricing The basic plan with up to 60 MB of new uploads per month is free. The Plus plan, with 1 GB of uploads per month, is $34.99 per year; the Premium plan gets you 10 GB and costs $69.99 per year.

SEO

13. Raven

Overview Reports are what tell you if a campaign is working and if targets are being met —report generation and presentation take up a considerable amount of a marketer’s time. Ravenis an SEO toolkit that makes creating marketing reports easier. It also helps you research, monitor and manage your social media, content, pay-per-click (PPC), and search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns.

Features

Automated marketing reports

More than 20 data connectors, including Google Analytics and Facebook Ads

15. Moz

OverviewMoz began as an SEO consulting company in 2004. It offers Moz Pro and Moz Local to help you improve search rankings to get more views and customers. Moz Pro is “the SEO toolset that’s got it all: keyword research, link building, site audits and page optimization,” according to the website, while Moz Local helps with SEO-integrated business listings.

Moz Pro features

Industry-leading SEO metrics

Many ranking tools

Site audit tool identifies errors

User-friendly analytics

Free trial

Pricing

Four plans, from $79 to $479 per month, both paid annually.

16. SEMrush

OverviewSEMrush helps you maximize your efforts in the areas of SEO, PPC, social media, content and public relations. It offers info on things like best-performing posts, performance versus the competition, and strategy analysis and trending topics.

Content Marketing

17. BuzzSumo

Overview

When you’re creating your marketing strategy, you’ll need to look for what is trending on sites and what is clicking with your audience. BuzzSumo is a tool that ranks content shared on social media sites based on the number of hits it gets. You can easily find who the most influential content curators or aggregators are within any niche.

BuzzSumo also gathers statistics on the industry’s influencers along with their associated websites. When used wisely and paired with some of the other tools on this list, the possibilities are endless.

Features

Content insights, alerts, curation, discovery, and analysis

Influencer amplification available

Competitor analysis and comparisons

Social backlinks and advertising filters

Open API

Pricing Three plans (prices are for monthly billing): Pro, $79 per month; Agency, $239 per month; and Enterprise, $559 per month.

18. Kapost

Overview Content marketing is big. And Kapost is a tool that combines world-class software and expert service to help you deliver content that gets results. It’s designed to help you manage the whole content marketing process, from planning to ideation to production and finally to distribution and analytics.

Visual Marketing (Images and Videos)

19. Piktochart

OverviewPiktochart helps you create professional-looking infographics even if you have no design experience. The tool provides over 100 templates that you can customize or just fill out.

Features

More than 600 professionally designed templates

Very user-friendly interface

Library of more than 4,000 images to use

Import data from Excel or Google spreadsheet or Survey Monkey

Pricing The basic plan is free. There are two upgraded versions: Lite, $15 per month; and Pro, $29 per month.

20. Vimeo

Overview The highly popular Vimeo site is a platform that lets you view, upload, and share videos. It has mostly original content instead of TV shows and movies.

Features

Can embed your own logo into the video (Pro version)

No ads before the video, unlike YouTube

Supportive community

Fewer videos than YouTube, so less competition for viewers

Pricing The basic plan is free; upgraded plans range from $5 to $50 per month.

21. Unbounce

OverviewUnbounce helps you build, publish and test landing pages. The site provides an easy-to-use editor to create high-conversion landing pages.

Features

Landing page and overlay templates

Real-time stats

A/B testing

Lead generation tools

Multiuser and client management

Integrations

Text replacement automatically changes selected keywords to match those used in search queries

Free trial

Pricing

Three plans (based on annual billing): Essential, $79 per month; Premium, $159 per month; and Enterprise, $399-plus per month.

22. GoToMeeting

Overview Meetings and calls with clients are a given, but you don’t have to be there in person. Video-conferencing software GoToMeeting lets you have meetings online, making it easy and cost-effective to collaborate with colleagues and interact with customers.

Features

Access to instant meetings with a single click

One-time scheduled and recurring meetings

Seamless audio

Recording option

Integrated scheduling with Microsoft Outlook

Use on Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone or Android

Free trial

Pricing

Three plans (based on annual billing): Starter, $19 per month; Pro, $29 per month; and Plus, $49 per month.

Automation Software

23. Pardot

OverviewPardot is web-based marketing software that helps you streamline lead management and create and track online campaigns. It offers modules for building and managing elements like forms and landing pages.

Features

Customizable templates

Email testing with automated CAN-SPAM compliance

Lead scoring, grading, and management

Tracking and analytics

Top-notch customer support

Real-time sales alerts

Pricing Three plans: Standard, $1,000 per month; Pro, $2,000 per month; and Ultimate, $3,000 per month.

4. Marketo

OverviewMarketo bills itself as a “world leader in marketing automation for companies of any size.” It’s a pioneer in innovation and offers a range of products; it also lets you tap into the insight of expert marketers through its Marketing Nation.